I hate those Mondays where a lot gets done and yet you feel as productive as a sloth. This was one of those. Finished the blog entry for Pet A Project, wow up an activity for Akikaran, had a council meeting, wrote the reflections for the Special school trips, collected certificates, cooked one dinner and two lunches and watched GoT and yet the day feels uneventful. I even squeezed in an argument about the pointless attendance system and still the day didn’t cut it.

I think it’s time I took a break and went on a vacation. I think the monotony of our all is killing me.

“Break? And what will happen to me then? You’re charged with taking care of me, remember? ” Scotch

Petting projects

A normal Saturday took a turn for the better when we kicked off the volunteer group at Pet a Project. Ranga Shankara, the location for our meet, was a wonderful venue and I enjoyed a productive hour, working on my assignments, while the gang rolled in. And it was such an amazing bunch to talk to. The power of volunteerism is that you do not have competition or that innate human need to one-up the other. The six of us were almost instantly chatting away like we’d known each other for years. There was already some playful banter and teasing, reminiscent of thick friends. For an outsider, we could have passed off for a group of friends reuniting after years of being apart. And that says wonders about the team that we have now.

The project itself has gotten me excited for a few weeks now. It follows in line with our conversations over the summer, at Bhor, where as educationists, we agree that there is something critically lacking in our daily school curriculum, that is leaving our children incapable in real-life situations. While the Schools of the Future Program targeted middle-income private schools, that could in turn seed fund the project with government schools, and focused largely on making learning visible in schools, Pet A Project aims at working specifically with low-income government schools, and enhancing the life-skills in these school students.

Questions remain about the true nature of the curriculum that has been designed already, the effectiveness tracking mechanism and the sustainability plan. But for now, it’s project-go, and that has always been a fun and exciting time.

New experiences

The day got better when Sid and I lost and found our way to Tortilla House, a quaint home studio in the residential streets of Koramangala, where the day’s edition of the Playback Theatre would be. The Actor’s Collective, founded by a ChristU Alum professor, and itself consisting of a number of ChristU alums, is one of the forerunners in the country on the alternate theatre concept, called Playback Theatre. From our first hello there, we felt extremely welcome and warm, with the ambience and the actors and their smiles.

Unlike a typical play, where the actors are up on stage, almost playing god, and the audience sits below, with eyes of endearment, here we were all right there in one single room. The audience sat at one end of the studio, while the actors took another. The facilitator did a wonderful job bringing the two together, and the crux of playback theatre – of acting scenes based on the stories shared by the audience – was extremely intriguing.

My personal experience, watching them enact my Trust Circle Conundrum, was insightful. The trust circle in itself has been something that I think about extensively, and the questions of my readiness to get into it will always plague me. But watching the actors enact that conflict, especially almost hinting that I should get in there, was a powerful feeling indeed.

Dreams

While a number of us shared our stories and watched in silence as the actors brought them to life on stage, the one story that moved me the most was Vinu’s struggle with the true origin of dreams. As beautiful as his struggle was, the way it was enacted was equally powerful.

Do we dream dreams that are our own, or are they dreams that we are made to dream?

His narrative to the question was his struggle with his identity as a homosexual and a passionate man and his dream of having a loving partner, a child and a dog to complete his family. As the relationship went down under, his dreams haunted him and he repeated the question often to justify his need to move on or his lethargy to stay put. I couldn’t have related to another’s struggle like I did with Vinu’s.

An engineering degree, a stable job in a multi-national company, a few trips offshore to work from exotic countries, a steady stream of vacations to exquisite lands, an extravagant marriage by 24, a baby by 26 and another by 28. Whose dreams are we expected to live? Does the society have such an effect on our pysche that even our dreams mirror the societal demands? Did we grow up dreaming of vacations in ultramarine blue seas? Weren’t our dreams more rustic and basic then?

And more importantly, how many of us are dreaming the dream of others and fooling ourselves into thinking they are our own?

“S, seems like you had a lot of fun this Saturday. Is it true that you went to a café where people cut a birthday cake and you dint even get a piece? Couldn’t you have tried to sneak one out, at least for me?” Scotch